The case of the missing notifications

[denise]

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

Comments

[mark]

I've added a bunch of debugging -- if someone can share a link to a comment that should have shown up in your inbox or email and didn't, please comment here and share it! Thank you.

[damnedest]

https://damnedest.dreamwidth.org/371.html?thread=1583219#cmt1583219

just did a bunch of replying to myself and produced this one that didn't send a notification!

[mark]

and just to confirm, you expected a notification to show up in the inbox for damnedest?

[damnedest]

yes, correct. it didn't show up in this account's inbox and i didn't receive a notification in my email

[mark]

was the comment posted screened and then unscreened/do you have auto-screening set up, or was it posted visible from the start?

[damnedest]

it was posted visible from the start, no screening

[mark]

okay I'm adding a bit more debugging, I was able to see that it did not, in fact, get delivered - but not why. if you can reproduce this in a bit (I'll comment again), I'd appreciate it

[damnedest]

sure thing :) will wait for your comment and then see if i can reproduce it

[mark]

if possible to repro, try now!

but also if you have to go, that's fine :)

[damnedest]

https://damnedest.dreamwidth.org/371.html?thread=1583987#cmt1583987 here's one -- but this one did land in my inbox, but didn't send to my email (which has been the more common experience)

[damnedest]

oops, it just landed, i can do more if you need! (have some spare time so isn't an issue, lol)

[mark]

Ah yeah, I see we were getting some timeouts to your email provider. Alas.

Let me know if you get one that doesn't show up at all, that's the real thing...!

[damnedest]

i've run 30 comments and none have failed, so! if i get a failed notification in normal life i'll let you know but seems to be chill for me now

(and ftr previously i was losing like 1 in 7 notifications)

[mark]

Alas; thank you for trying! I guess I'm glad it's working now... but darn!

[graveling]

Would it be helpful to tell you about threads where notifs are arriving late, or is this just for completely missing ones?

(Someone posted a link to this post on RPAnons, so the RP community is here to support you!)

[mark]

Sadly no, late is usually just the machinery being slow for some reason, but otherwise working. Or at least for today's problem, the thing I'm trying to figure out is why some of them up and go walkabout.

[graveling]

Fair enough! I've been getting my notifs, afaict, so hopefully someone will be able to kick in with more useful data.

[mark]

Great to hear it! I usually only here when it doesn't happen so sometimes I wonder if anybody actually gets them... ha.

[kore]

I've been getting mine no problem! //cheers you on

[kalloway]

https://spring-renewal.dreamwidth.org/51244.html?thread=52012#cmt52012 - part of a comment chain where I received inbox/email replies from the same account.

https://kalloway.dreamwidth.org/2039132.html?thread=17682268#cmt17682268 - own journal.

https://communal-creators.dreamwidth.org/41892.html?thread=556452#cmt556452 - first one I realized I hadn't gotten (because I went to reply to others).

[moonhare]

‘Real-time’ debugging :D Thank you for your diligence! I can’t say I’ve missed any notifications or not, my most frustrating issue is not being able to reach the site. “504 Gateway Time-out” has become a regular message here, though I got right in, albeit slowly, this morning.

Good luck with all, and know your work is appreciated. :o)

[zavodilaterrarium]

Dunno about my notifs either, but I've also seen a few 504s and slow loading recently. Not with a particular consistency or frequency, but more than previously.

[loganberrybunny]

Thank you for all the work you do! It's very much appreciated. That problem hasn't hit me, but coincidentally (or not, I don't know) an irritating issue I'd had for a few days whereby I haven't been able to switch cleanly between formatting types on the Create Entries page, eg Casual HTML to Rich Text Editor, has also gone away as of today. So thank you for that, whatever you did to fix it! :)